Floaters & Things. aka Leviticus 19.14. The Bible is a funny old thing. Sometimes it makes me think of it as the YouTube of olden days (as well as current times, of course): you can find just about anything and everything in it, from the deepest, most clear-sighted wisdom to the most flagrant lot of crappy excuses to discriminate, oppress, enslave and even exterminate (or smite as the KJV so euphemistically puts it) your enemies, whether real, perceived or merely designated. You’ll find exquisite poetry and crushingly boring lists of dos and don’ts (a good deal of them arbitrary beyond reason or imagination), soul-stirring subtlety and mind-stifling banality. Not to mention utterly deranged visions. Personally I’m pretty much an Ecclesiastes girl. I love that book. (I wish I could go back in time and have tea and a nice long rambling chat with the bloke that wrote it.) Recently, though, I’ve been having a go at Leviticus. It is mostly an unreadable bore wrapped around true gems, like the one quoted by DandyBat. Milton extrapolated beautifully from it when he said They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness. DandyBat is very fond of this most epigrammatic reflection, too. DandyBat may be an obsessive sharp dresser and an opinionated so-and-so but he does know his philosophical onions, he does. We like DandyBat and we always invite him to the best parties and salons and celebratory whathaveyous, in part because of his mordant wit and in part because he always shows up with a retinue of chubby, fluffy and totally cuddly beasties.